Author: Allyson Kazmucha

Need a date and don’t like the bar scene? These are the best dating apps for iPhone!

Part of being human is making connections and having relationships, especially romantic ones. And romantic relationships have to start somewhere. That’s where dating comes in and more specifically, dating apps for your iPhone. Sure, there are bars and gyms, school and work, but we have our phones with us all the time, why not use them to help us meet someone great? There are lot dating apps available for iPhone. But if you’re looking for love, which are the absolute best ones?

Plenty of Fish

Plenty of Fish is not only a dating app for iPhone, but one of the largest online dating communities in the world. There are already over 50 million members so finding someone that is somewhat local to you shouldn’t be too much of a challenge. The app itself is also well designed and offers push notifications to keep you up to date on who’s viewing your profile and messages from potential matches.

If you want the largest pool of potential matches to pick from, check out Plenty of Fish.

• Free – Download Now

Coffee Meets Bagel

Coffee Meets Bagel makes finding a potential date a little more personal and a little less cold. You are required to link Coffee Meets Bagel to your Facebook account and your matches only extend so far out of your friends group so you can verify someone is actually real. You are served up one potential candidate, or bagel, a day. If you mutually like each other, you can swap info via a private number Coffee Meets Bagel serves up for you.

If online dating makes you nervous, Coffee Meets Bagel is a sure fire way for you to make sure someone is legit.

• Free – Download Now

Tinder

Tinder is a unique dating app for iPhone that lets you browse locals it thinks you may be interested in anonymously. Only if the two of you both like each other will Tinder attempt to make an introduction and reveal your identities. Once you’ve made a match you can chat back and forth or continue looking for other people. Aside from the anonymity portion, the app itself is one of the most well designed dating apps available on any platform.

If you want to keep things personal and anonymous until you’ve found a match, look no further than Tinder.

• Free – Download Now

OkCupid

OkCupid has been around a long time and has a huge community. The unique broadcast feature lets you tell other potential interests when you’re free and what you’d like to do. They can then answer or suggest something. It’s then up to you whether or not you’d like to meet up.

If you are spur of the moment and want to easily find people to hang out with, OkCupid is a great choice.

• Free – Download Now

Grindr

Grindr is the largest online dating community for gay, bisexual, and bi-curious men. Whether you’re looking for a date, someone to talk to, or more — you’ll more than likely find it on Grindr. Better yet, Grindr doesn’t cost you a dime.

If you’re a gay or bi male, you don’t need to download any dating app other than Grindr.

• Free – Download Now

Brenda

Brenda is a casual dating app for lesbians and bisexual women. Whether you’re looking locally for something serious or want to find other gay women to hang out with before you travel, Brenda can help you find them. The app is well designed and has features such as face lock so you can control who sees your face. You can also set up push notifications for potential matches as well as see what other women think of your profile.

If you’re a singe lesbian or bisexual female, Brenda is one of the best dating apps available.

• Free – Download Now

Your picks?

If you’ve used dating apps in the past, which ones did you prefer and why? Did you find some good matches or were they all dead ends? Be sure to let me know in the comments!

From quick reply, to custom gestures, keyboard shortcuts, and more, here’s how to get the most out of your iOS 7 jailbreak on iPhone and iPad!

Jailbreak lets you do far more with your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad than is possible out of the box. For some it’s an unwanted complication, for others, dream functionality come true. Part of the power of jailbreak comes from the apps and tweaks that it lets you run. Available from Cydia, the jailbreak app store, they can change almost everything about the look and behavior of your iOS device. But which ones are worth your time and effort? Which ones are the best? Here are my favorites!

BiteSMS

BiteSMS is hands down the best replacement for the Messages app. It’s been around almost as long as jailbreak itself and has always been heavily supported by the developer. It features quick reply and quick compose options with gestures that are completely customizable through Activator. You can also by credits via BiteSMS which is great for folks that send a lot of international messages since it’s much cheaper than carrier rates. BiteSMS is currently in beta for iOS 7 but you can install it now by simply adding a source.

If you want a better messaging option than what the Messages app offers natively, there’s no other option but BiteSMS.

• $7.99 (Free trial) – More Info

Activator

Activator basically controls all the swipe gestures on your iPhone or iPad and allows you to customize them until your hearts content. Want to double tap on the status bar and launch a quick compose window for BiteSMS? Activator lets you do that, and so much more. Tweak controls for music, a swipe to email a specific contact, or to launch your camera. The possibilities are endless with Activator.

If you want to customize gestures to your personal liking, you need Activator.

• Free – Cydia Link

SwitchSpring

SwitchSpring not only gives you a quick way to respring your iPhone through Control Center but a super easy way to kill all apps from the multitasking tray in one go. Although I really like the card interface of the multitasking section of iOS 7 and the live previews it offers, it isn’t always the most efficient way to quit a ton of apps. With SwitchSpring I can kill all my apps in less than three seconds.

If you want an easy way to kill everything in multitasking, SwitchSpring is a super convenient way to do it.

• Free – Cydia Link

SwipeSelection Pro

SwipeSelection Pro is a keyboard tweak that makes editing text a lot easier. Instead of having to tap in between words and use the magnifying glass, SwipeSelection Pro lets you scrub right on your keyboard to fine tune where your cursor ends up. That also means you don’t ever have to remove your fingers from the keyboard. There’s a free version as well, but the Pro version was completely redone for iOS 7 and gives more customization options than the older version.

• $1.99 – Cydia Link

iFile

iFile is a full blown file manager for the iPhone that lets you browse the entire file system unrestricted since it gives you root user permissions. It also lets you view several file types that iOS doesn’t let you view by default such as ZIP files. I don’t use iFile itself that frequently but I do use it all the time in conjunction with other apps when I don’t have a computer around and need to open a file that my iPhone doesn’t let me natively.

If you need root access to your iPhone’s file system or open many different file types on a regular basis, get iFile.

• Free – Cydia Link

CCControls

Before Control Center was around, there was SBSettings. Now that Control Center’s here, there’s still a lot of advanced options to be had and CCControls gives you them. With more toggles than you can shake a stick at, it’s the best option. It even has different themes built right in to make it easier to tell what controls are activated and what aren’t.

• Free – Cydia Link

F.lux

There are few things as bad as checking your iPhone in a dark room and being blinded by it with no warning. It’s no secret that ambient light sensors in iPhones and iPads have never been that great. F.lux takes things a step further and actually warms the screen color depending on the time of day so you don’t end up being caught off guard by a hard, bright screen.

If you have sensitive eyes and find your iPhone screen tones to harsh in dim lighting, F.lux is awesome.

• Free – Cydia Link

Your picks?

Did I miss any of your favorite jailbreak apps or tweaks? If so, please add them to the comments and tell me — what makes them your must-haves?

I recently went on vacation for a few weeks. Given my job at iMore, I did what any of you would expect me to do — I loaded up my iPhone with all the interesting travel apps I could find, all the ones I thought would help me explore more, all the ones that would help me make the most of my time in London and Paris. Guess what? I ended up not using any of them. What I ended up using was an app I’d had installed on my iPhone for years… Foursquare.

I’ll preface this by saying I’ve never really used Foursquare locally unless it was for check-in specials or I had a specific reason, like holding myself accountable to go to the gym three times a week. I’ve just never seen the point in checking in to random places that I visit regularly. When I got overseas, my mentality completely changed.

The first time I opened Foursquare on our vacation was our first night in London. Our flight was delayed three hours and we hadn’t eaten since we left Chicago. Nothing on the room service menu looked appealing so I turned to my iPhone. I opened my travel folder and started browsing the apps I’d downloaded before we left. To my dismay, nothing really looked like it’d help me find something relatively close to our hotel that served a low key menu. And to figure that out, I’d most likely have to search them on another app like Yelp! anyways.

Then I remembered Foursquare and fired it up. In a matter of seconds I was presented with a huge list of pubs and restaurants all within a mile of our hotel. Not only could I see locations, but I could see tips people had left as well as the menu and price range. Excellent. We were on our way in just a matter of minutes to a pub we had picked out.

After dinner we figured we’d head out and explore a little of London before retiring for the night. Again I found myself turning to Foursquare to see what was around us. The London Eye was right around the corner so that’s where we went. From there we decided to head to some other sights across town. Again, I could simply search something in Foursquare and choose between both Google Maps and Apple Maps for directions. In our case, it was Google Maps due to the excellent transit directions for navigating the London Underground. In a matter of seconds we were on our way.

During our trip I also found myself wanting to check in places, so we both did. This served two purposes for us. The first was that we had a digital diary of all the places we went during our trip that we could look back at anytime we’d like. The second was that my girlfriend and I both have very worrisome parents. Since our check-ins posted right to our Twitter and Facebook feeds instantly, they knew where we were at all times. It was also fun for them to follow along with our trip and view photos of all the places we were before we even uploaded any.

The most interesting thing I found about Foursquare while abroad was how many of the things we saw that were completely off the beaten path. In London those places consisted of pubs that locals recommended and coffee shops that weren’t Starbucks. We even found tips on what vendors to check out at the local Borough Market (which we probably wouldn’t have found without Foursquare anyways). Not to mention the money we saved with check-in specials at local businesses. In Paris we found lots of cafes and bakeries from tips left on Foursquare that we never would have stumbled upon otherwise. Neither of us speak very good French so being able to read tips in English saved us a lot of time.

To me these are things that I just didn’t get from specialized travel apps. We know what Big Ben is and how to search for the London Eye on Google. What I want is an experience that’s different from the next person that went to London on vacation. Foursquare gave us that. The difference is that most of those apps can’t serve up vast amounts of crowd sourced data that’s always current. I now realize why so many check-in apps are just throwing their hands up and pulling from Foursquare instead. You just can’t beat it.

Starting now I’m going to change my attitude about how I use Foursquare. It was the feedback and input from European locals that made our visit to London and Paris a cultural experience that didn’t consist of staring at monuments and buildings right next to other tourists. When I know a Chicago restaurant is worth checking out or that a museum offers free admission after a certain time, I’m going to make it a point to leave those tips for others to discover.

And next time I go on vacation, Foursquare will be the only guide book in my pocket.

When we first set up our Macs we tweak and adjust settings to suit our own personal preferences. The worst thing in the world is when someone comes along and doesn’t respect our Mac. We’ve all experienced it from time to time. They pop into System Preferences like they own the place and start changing things like trackpad speed, display resolution, and who knows what else. We are left appalled when they’re done. Luckily, OS X has a neat little trick to keep people from doing all these terrible things. Here’s how:

1. Click on the  logo in the top left corner of your Mac and click on System Preferences.
2. In the same top menu, now click on View and then Customize.
3. The System Preferences window now should have checkmark boxes next to each item in System Preferences. Simply uncheck the ones you want to hide and click Done.

That’s all there is to it. While there isn’t any password protection for System Preferences in OS X (even though there should be), this is a neat trick that should keep anyone out that is on your computer for only a limited amount of time, unless they also know about this trick. In that case, you’re out of luck and would be better off just creating a Guest account.

And remember, for some of us changing our System Preferences is just as bad as rearranging our living room furniture. Don’t do it!

Evomail+ is now available for iPhone and boasts a simpler, more fluid experience than its predecessor, most of which was based on collected user feedback. The new One Button feature of Evomail+ constantly adapts and changes to better suit what you’re doing at that exact moment. Which is why I’m replacing the default Mail app on my iPhone with Evomail+, at least for now.

When it comes to workflow, Evomail+ has been designed from the ground up in order to make email not only a more manageable experience, but more of a conversational tool that we don’t dread using. Dominic Flask, co-founder and lead designer of Evomail has this to say:

With the re-design of Evomail+ we focused on streamlining the user’s experience by creating the One Button, a single blue button that adapts to contextually fit within its environment allowing for faster navigation of your inbox and messages,

To most of us, email is a deeply personal experience that all of us handle differently. Depending on my workflow, how I choose to respond and organize emails could be completely different than that of even one of my colleagues. A lot of the issue I’ve taken with third party email clients in the past is that there just isn’t an all in one solution across multiple platforms… yet.

I think Evomail+ brings us closer than ever to a feasible alternative solution. For me, I need an ecosystem that encompasses my entire workflow, not just bits and pieces of it. The mail issues with Mavericks finally made me ditch Mac Mail altogether several months back and I’ve settled on Airmail to replace it. It’s the only third party mail client on any platform that’s gotten me to ditch the native option for good. Mainly because no third party apps ever play nice across platforms.

When it comes to alternative mail apps for iOS, I’ve seen very little point in organizing things on my iPhone with a workflow that isn’t available to me on my Mac, which is where I spend about 50{813a954d5e225a1509f22204ece89c855080ce25555f20805f61bed63cbfde3b} of my day hammering out emails. Airmail lets me quickly archive or delete messages, something the stock Mail.app on my iPhone doesn’t let me do very easily. It’s one or the other, unless you want to manually perform several taps to do the opposite of whatever you’ve chosen in settings. Archive and delete is something Evomail+ does very well with just a quick swipe in one direction or the other.

Some people may take issue with the fact that Evomail+ does store copies of your emails on their EvoCloud service. This personally doesn’t bother me but it’s a consideration for many who are bothered by that from a privacy standpoint.

Evomail+ is the first email app that makes me want to work through the teething problems of creating email harmony across desktop and mobile. I think I’m going to give it an honest try with Evomail+ and hope I never have to look back. If you happen to check out Evomail+, what do you think? Is it enough to make you ditch the default Mail app? Why or why not?

• Free – Download Now

Source: Evomail